Germaine Greer stirs the pot again on Q&A with Julie Bishop question

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when Germaine Greer opens her mouth someone, somewhere, is bound to be offended.

The 76-year-old writer, scholar and activist didn't become one of the most well known figures in Australian public life, and particularly its intellectual life, because she speaks and thinks in tepid soundbites. Or because she presents the cautious ideas of other less famous authors and thinkers.

She's a celebrity because she shoots from the hip, the gut, the bilious depth of her insides, the mind - both when its keenly focused and allowed to wander - and occasionally, seemingly, her backside. She muses. She cajoles. She prosecutes. She pokes fun. And she gives the rest of us something to talk about.

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She occupies a virtually unique, provocative role in our public life. She is one of our most famous cultural exports and the author of truly seminal feminist texts. She's both an avowed Marxist and a Celebrity Big Brother contestant. She has provoked outrage for declaring that the animal world had "finally taken its revenge" on Steve Irwin, in the aftermath of the Crocodile Hunter's death. On another occasion, it was her declaration that Prime Minister Julia Gillard wore unflattering jackets and had a "big arse" that upset people.

Germaine Greer on the Q&A panel.

And last night, she squirted a bit of kerosene on the fire during a provocative exchange with Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop. It came up during a discussion on an all-female edition of Q&A about the "Free the Nipple" campaign - for which women show their naked breasts on social media to protest rules against the practice.

The ABC show's host, Annabel Crabb, tongue in cheek, dared to ask Bishop whether she had considered joining the movement. Bishop declined and made yet another joke about her love of emojis (she's just hip like that, you know?).

At this point in launched Greer, "What if it got you the commutation of the life sentences of the two Australians?"

Bishop shook her head and smiled, searching for a dignified answer to such a wildly inappropriate, crass question, while Greer sat back and chuckled, seeming rather pleased with herself. In that moment, it was if she had dropped a bucket of the little smiling poop emojis right on the panel.

The all-women panel on Q&A including Germain Greer and Julie Bishop.Credit:ABC

Some seem genuinely outraged by this exchange. I can't muster more than a giggle and a groan.

This is not because I don't respect Bishop's authority as Foreign Affairs Minister, and the most senior woman in government (I do) or feel a huge amount of sadness and revulsion about the barbarism of the planned Bali nine duo executions (I do).

Germaine Greer in 1972.

To me, Greer's joke wasn't really about any of them. It was an attempt, yes, to get a rise out of Bishop, but it was more an attempt to get a rise out of us, to liven up a show, to push conversation in a new uncomfortable direction, to catch a bit of the limelight, to defy expectations of what we think women, and particularly women in their 70s, should say. And, most of all, it was an attempt to stir the pot.

Whether you think this makes her villainous, tedious, amusing or heroic will depend on your point of view (and likely, whether you already thought of her as a villain or a hero). At different times, I have viewed Greer as each of these things.

I can't stand her controversial and unkind views on transgender people, and I couldn't disagree with her more on that front. But I also treasure the battered copy of The Female Eunuch I nicked off my mother in my teens, which was my first foray into bold, feminist writing on female sexuality. She was talking about the female body in transgressive ways long before today's "Free the Nipple" celebrity activists were born. She is still unafraid to be publicly combative in an age when relatively few other women are.

She's a complex, contradictory figure, like many male writers and intellectuals throughout history who we accept are both talented and boorish, profound and inane, wonderful and appalling. She's proof that punk is not dead.

And when she's gone, if Q&A is still going (God help us), and we're left with the usual panels of party hacks and business leaders spouting well-rehearsed, focus-tested lines, we will miss her.